Here's a new report from LeanIn.org, the nonprofit founded by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, who in the past has advised us women wanting to be appreciated at the workplace to speak up for ourselves, and yes, to make a case for a raise. But "Women in the Workplace 2017," based on surveys from 70,000 employees at 222 corporations, shows a more complex picture of gendered and cultural perceptions.
Women of color have a tougher time making headway, and it’s not for lack of trying or for asking for raises. And the numbers of female leaders in relationship to our numbers in the population show a consistent underrepresentation, regardless of the occupational field. Men tend to believe women are doing better advancing on the job front than they in fact are. Men also believe they are helping their female partners more than their female partners report they actually do. So guys, lean in and take initiative in cooking and childcare, and look around you to notice whether women are well represented in your department's leadership—and whether work policies include support for having an actual everyday life. Without a wife.
We admire this report but still have to point out that the numbers given for consumer banking in this do NOT represent investment banking on Wall Street, where EconoMan still rules and the numbers of women leaders remain strikingly low and lower paid than peers. And its focus is strictly on big-corporate America, not where most women tend to work, and where the same obstacles and misperceptions about race and gender persist.
This image is from Chris Skinner’s blog, from an article titled “Banks’ Leadership Teams Are Fatally Flawed.” https://thefinanser.com/2017/05/banks-leadership-teams-fatally-flawed.html/. We’ll just add to his good article that the bigger the bank, the more their boards look this way.
Here’s a story on Lean In's report from Fortune. It’s worth a read.
http://fortune.com/2017/10/10/women-in-the-workplace-2017/
The 37-page Women in the Workplace 2017 report itself is here, with an apt headline, "Getting to gender equality begins with realizing how far we have to go":
womenintheworkplace.com/
So What Exactly Is Screwnomics* ???
Screwnomics* is the unspoken but widely applied economic theory that women should always work for less, or better, for free.
And who thought he didn't have to talk openly about this, or stop taking us and our Mother Earth for granted?
EconoMan is my Screwnomics' name for the money guys in charge of how we live. Let's change his attitude, shall we?
The Gini-coefficient is not about a girl named Gini
The Gini-coefficient is a complex measurement of income inequality that nations take an interest in. Why? Because, as I write in Screwnomics:
"Too little for the majority has made for an era of global disruption, huge migrations of populations, and wars over energy sources, food, and water. This disruption is why the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its spy-wonks track Gini-coefficient ratios country-by-country, as does the UN, the World Bank, and the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). All are aware that people deprived of what they need to live will tend to object—sometimes violently.
"Yet current US policy—or rather our lack of it—allows the freewheeling operations of economic vultures on Wall Street. Vulture traders and hedge funds also watch these Gini-coefficient numbers, country-by-country. They are looking for the weakest to prey on."
Who has the highest rate of income inequality? Turkey? Sudan? NOPE. It's the US, says gini-research.org, an organization of scholars from around the world examining trends in search of insights and warnings. So who exactly is preying on whom becomes the question, yes?! The organization is here: gini-research.org/articles/home
Their US report, all 119 pages, is linked here. The projects' reports were published by Oxford Press in 2014. gini-research.org/system/uploads/443/original/US.pdf?1370077377
Help us get the word out. Like our Facebook page and tell your friends, too. And look for our book, Screwnomics: How Our Economy Works Against Women and Real Ways to Make Lasting Change, out in bookstores, April 2018.
When Wombs R State Property, Women Pay 4 Babies
US courts have only recently upheld what Rebecca Solnit calls, “a woman’s right to the property of her truth.” What does she mean? Women were legally excluded from basic rights. She couldn’t vote until 1920. If married, she couldn’t open her own bank account until 1974. The last state to exclude women jurors, Louisiana, lost its US Supreme Court case in 1975. Harvard did not admit women until 1977. Yes, you read those dates right.
A woman’s right to make private decisions about her own body, and whether she wants to be pregnant or not, won in 1973, remains a question in many states today. Without legal equity, economic equity can never be achieved. So why exactly should only females pay for maternity benefits in their insurance plans? And why are those proposing the ACA repeal the same rich white guys who want to make ending pregnancies impossible? There are more of these guys in Congress--see what the latest repeal and replace efforts do to women below:
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/19/16328928/obamacare-repeal-cassidy-graham-health-care-women
Racist Masculinity Costs Dearly
Cassandra Merlin of Claremont NH, mother of 8-year-old Quincy (above), confides to Angela Helm at The Root the painful story of her children. Quincy was hung by their teenaged neighbors after racist taunts. Ayanna, his 11-year-old sister, witnessed it; the ringleader of the three teens lives two doors down. Ayanna is terrified, and yet at the time of this story, the police had not spoken to her as a witness. www.theroot.com/interview-mother-of-8-year-old-nearly-hung-in-nh-speak-1805654536
The Newsweek story on this was not clear: it included a rope and a picnic table—but left out the tree, so that it sounded as if the kid had been pushed off the table and gotten tangled in the rope. Kids do goofy, dangerous stuff. www.newsweek.com/hanging-boy-biracial-8-years-old-black-white-new-hampshire-lynching-claremont-664415 But no, Helm's story and pictures explain that there was a rope hanging from a tree, where a tire swing had been, and that Quincy hung there while the teens, including a girl, walked away. The boy's injuries required days in the hospital, though his injuries are not only physical and affect his family, the neighborhood, the town, and now the nation.
About a hundred people turned out for a vigil, though it was interrupted by a man driving past in a truck, who shouted, “All lives matter,” responding to “Black Lives Matter” signs in the crowd, according to NHPR. The man also yelled, “Stop making it about race.” readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/45792-the-hate-report-boy-8-victim-of-attempted-lynching-in-new-hampshire
Why is this an economic story? Because it is about race, and also about gender. Let us count the long-lasting costs of male violence, while pretending race and gender don't sort out US economic order. Notably, Cassandra is a single mom working as a bartender, living in a "rough" part of this white working-class town, with a younger child who also had to go to the hospital with a rare blood disorder. While in the hospital, a shooter came into Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, which had into shut-down mode, causing more trauma, requiring more police. The town has an opioid crisis and high poverty rates, so little Quincy Merlin’s trauma is set in a sea of traumas and violence--with a racist masculinity unleashed by Washington's Trump-fest of bombast and bullying.
In what way did these teen boys know that their job is to police racism and enforce it? What purpose for those in power in Washington does such a racist masculinity serve? The state is a masculine construction, enforced by police, who minimized this event until Quincy’s mom went public. Paul Kivel, who work on issues of domestic violence, says identity is about discovering “What do I stand for?” “Who do I stand with?” In this case, you needn’t choose. Both poor Quincy and those pathetic teen bullies on the rough side of town are suffering from an uncaring economy that wages war, threatening cuts to health care, opioid treatment, and support to working families, while imposing austerity with low wages. We need to be waging life, not war.
There's a go-fund-me page set up for the family to help them leave the town that caused them so much pain. www.gofundme.com/helpquincyheal
The Woman who NEARLY won healthcare for all
She’s no household name, but Frances Perkins ought to be on everyone’s minds this year, as US Sen. Bernie Sanders introduces a Medicare for All bill. Who is Perkins? Only the first woman ever appointed to a presidential cabinet, joining Franklin Delano Roosevelt as Labor Secretary in 1933. It so happened that Perkins, raised by a strict Republican family and educated at Mt. Holyoke when few women went to college, in 1911 had witnessed a young woman jumping to her death at the Triangle shirtwaist fire. She became an eloquent advocate for common, working people.
Perkins took the cabinet position only under condition that FDR support her bold agenda that became The New Deal. It included a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, workers’ compensation and other labor protections, abolition of child labor, unemployment aid, a federal employment service, and Social Security pension insurance—all of which she won, and which we all take for granted. She also sought universal healthcare—the one big measure she lost.
Why? The American Medical Society threatened to kill Social Security unless the provision for healthcare insurance for all, originally included, was removed. She compromised to win what she could.
Her remarkable record of achievements earned her the naming of the Labor Department’s office building in Washington DC—but unlike confederate generals, no statue was raised to remind us that Frances was female and powerful in an un-bloody way.
Biographer Kirsten Downey says that Perkins’ ideas were essentially socialist ones, though she left the Socialist party in 1909 to become a Democrat. Unexpectedly, this year’s bill by Independent/Socialist Sanders is joined by Democratic Senators supporting it, notably Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, and the numbers are growing. Rachel Maddow considers it a marker of those considering running for President in 2020. Is there something new in the air? www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/warren-throws-support-behind-sanders-single-payer-plan
You can learn more about Perkins at the center dedicated to her history as architect of the New Deal. EconoGirlfriends, let’s make her a household name. francesperkinscenter.org/life-new/
